Kay; my knowledge of computers and computer parts is limited to "This does That"; I know next to nothing about models and all of that shizz. I've finally gotten a decent income so I can start upgrading my PC bit by bit. What do you recommend I should start with and with what?

Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+

AM2 (940) Socket

M2N E-SLI Motherboard

2GB DDR2 RAM

Geforce GTS250

I'm looking to upgrade my PC for gaming specifically.

I think that's all the specs you need right?

 

What kind of games? MW2, Team Fortress, WoW?

 

2GB of RAM is fairly low. You probably want at least 4GB for gaming.

Your processor would be the other item I'd suggest upgrading.

The rest of your system looks alright to me. Geforce GTS 250 is considered a solid graphics card, although there are certainly better cards on the market.

 

2G is fine for an XP system. I have a Geforce 460, runs almost any game damn well. Also, you may want to look at dual 3.0 ghz processors. Quad core is overkill if you aren't doing any media work imo.

 

XP is outdated, games are abandoning support for it. Beyond that, 2 GB is paltry, even for XP when gaming. It's also extremely cheap now a days, if you're upgrading your box, it's one of the best bang-for-the-buck upgrades you can make.

Beyond that, a dual core 3.0 ghz sounds like just the thing here. Your vid card is great for most normal res games maxed out everywhere else.

If you want to stick with your motherboard (which will greatly limit upgrades later on), than I'd suggest this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=AMD_ATHLON_64_X2-_-19-103-279-_-Product

2.9ghz standard, and could easily be OCed over 3.0. Overclocking is so easy these days, there's really no reason not to do it.

 

It sorta depends on what your budget is. If you have a couple hundred bucks to spend on it, I would recommend upgrading the entire platform (motherboard, cpu, and RAM). The AM2 socket is pretty outdated these days, so if you just upgrade to a better AM2 processor you're going to need to upgrade again pretty soon if you want to keep up with the latest games. Your graphics card should be good for a while longer; people are still running games pretty well with 8800s and 9800s, which are older versions of the 250 (iirc).

My recommendation for a low cost full platform upgrade would be:

Athlon II X3 440

AsRock 870

4GB GSkill Ripjaws

That comes in at around $250ish for a huge increase in performance. I would recommend the triple core over a dual core because many games today are optimized for multiple cores and will actually use two cores at once, leaving the third core on the triple core open for any background programs you might have running. Plus, you have a chance of being able to unlock the fourth core on the processor (AMD's newer dual and triple core processors are just quad cores with one or two cores locked up either because they were defective or because there was more need for triple/dual core processors).

The new motherboard leaves a ton of headroom for upgrades. The AM3 socket supports all of AMD's current processors up to the new hexacore models, and the SATA III and USB 3.0 add some measure of futureproofing.

*Edit* Just noticed you were in New Zealand, so prices will probably be significantly higher there (taking a quick look at some of the NZ online computer shops, it looks like about double the cost (NZ dollars vs American))